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rsser
2nd November 2010, 02:44 PM
Outside of the 3rd bowl on the new lathe.

So many things went wrong with this but the figure's too good to have given up.

I've been cutting feet with a parting tool but that can leave a deal of tear-out. As posted, I've got good results using a skew as a scraper to clean this up, but on this stuff it made it worse.

So I recut the foot vertical section with a detail gouge and then shear scraped with its wing heading away from the corner. Much betterer :cool:

This time I sized the foot to fit into a chuck in clamp mode that shouldn't leave marks. Getting sick of mounting a piece 3 times, and with small feet a recess mount has limitations (design, bowl flex).

artme
2nd November 2010, 05:28 PM
That's some great looking timber Ern!!


Tell us again: What lathe is that?:p

BozInOz
2nd November 2010, 05:37 PM
Can't really see the tear out. Frustrating though.

rsser
3rd November 2010, 06:47 AM
Arthur, it's a grilled, not battered, VL175 ;-}

BoI, the pic was taken after completing the outside.

The wood was both soft and brittle if that makes sense so a prime candidate for tear-out. It could easily have been sanded away but where's the fun in that?

Ed Reiss
3rd November 2010, 12:15 PM
hmmmmm...not the color of Box Elder that I'm used to here in the states, Ern.

Have you dyed it the golden yellow?

rsser
3rd November 2010, 12:59 PM
An artefact of the lighting/dig cam Ed.

This was from a bunch of crotch pieces: mainly cream, some yellowy brown patches, and the odd red stripe which disappeared during rough-out drying.

Ed Reiss
4th November 2010, 11:59 AM
:2tsup:

Gil Jones
4th November 2010, 12:33 PM
Hey Ern,
Nice bowl. :2tsup:
Gil

NeilS
4th November 2010, 02:52 PM
Ern, any chance of a picy of the bowl in profile?

.

rsser
4th November 2010, 04:42 PM
Sure; haven't had a chance to hollow it out yet.

Have acquired a light tent and daylight fluoro spots in the hope of improving the standard of photography!

Thanks Gil.

NeilS
4th November 2010, 07:58 PM
Sure; haven't had a chance to hollow it out yet.

Have acquired a light tent and daylight fluoro spots in the hope of improving the standard of photography!



No rush, whenever convenient.

.

rsser
7th November 2010, 12:21 PM
Here it is.

I found it impossible to record the colours accurately despite all the gear. Too cool and contrasty. Oh well. May try a different lens later on.

The Box Elder (pics 1 & 2) is about 150mm across and in profile is sitting on a plastic stand. One of the failures early on was a catch on the foot while I was creeping close to it with a tear drop scraper in shear mode. So the foot was turned away and another formed. That meant the initial gentle ogee form had to give way to something not as nice. The new foot was a little narrower and had to be mounted in diff jaws so the piece needs remounting and cleaning up. ATM I'm sick of the thing.

The other bowl is no. 2 off the VL, Camphor Laurel, 30cm x 6cm. Finish was DO then wax but I didn't let the oil sit for long enough to go off and it's dulled the wax on the inside of the bowl. It was recess mounted so it can be redone.

Apologies for the speck.

artme
7th November 2010, 01:06 PM
Nice work Ern!!!:2tsup::2tsup::2tsup:

Great profile and a nice thin wall.

Timber looks a bit like Camphor.

letzzzgo
7th November 2010, 01:17 PM
Both bowls look great ... love the figure!

Cheers, John

efgee88
7th November 2010, 03:08 PM
Nice bowls/platters.

But really Ern, how dare you present the speck to us forumites!

I am affronted - it is surely the mother of all specks........ Have you given it a name, by the way?


Something to be said for fixed lens digital camera systems after all.

Cheers,

FrankG

rsser
7th November 2010, 04:01 PM
Thanks for the feedback gents.

For some reason I'm stuck on that kind of form for the moment.

Frank, yeah, I've called it a bleddy nuisance! I've got about 600 pics from the last trip with that speck. Darn LCD screens are too small to notice them. And I thought I'd found it on the lens back but no. A mirror clean and sensor shake got rid of most of it.

Will swap to a 70mm prime; I suspect it will do a better job of capturing fine colour differences.

rsser
7th November 2010, 04:56 PM
No improvement with the prime.

I'm stumped. Have posted a query here (http://www.woodworkforums.com/f8/photographing-your-masterpiece-64791/index5.html).

Hope you can help, Frank.

Gasman
8th November 2010, 08:33 AM
Thats a real beaut Ern certainly wouldn`t worry about the pics :2tsup:
Steve

Ozkaban
8th November 2010, 08:46 AM
Neat work Ern! Love the bowl and could just imagine your frustration with the tear out...

don't worry about the speck (probably on the sensor... ), that's what photoshop is for :-)

Cheers,
Dave

ticklingmedusa
8th November 2010, 06:22 PM
Sleek profiles Ern.
I think I like the curvy line on the camphor laurel best.
Nice clean up on the box elder.

nalmo
8th November 2010, 11:05 PM
Why not use an incident light meter Ern , and set exposure manually - at least they will all be the same that way (and shoot in Raw if you can, that way you'll have 2 hobbies that take up all your spare time).

NeilS
9th November 2010, 07:42 AM
Swish....:2tsup:

.

hughie
9th November 2010, 09:06 AM
:doh: some how I missed this one :?

Nice work Ern. :2tsup: I like the lines and a darn good finish to boot. Looks like your wing has mended well. :U

Ed Reiss
9th November 2010, 01:06 PM
Both pieces turned out well, but if you really don't like the box elder one, throw it in the Big Pond and float it my way:U

rsser
9th November 2010, 06:20 PM
It's not that dense Ed so it should float. Where it goes .. well.

Thanks again for the feedback all.

Yes Hughie, the wing flaps well but complains afterwards, so with the woodwork as with the lathe I'm going back to what turned me on at the beginning. Taking a well figured bit of wood and trying to show it off to best effect.

The brainbox oddly has been a bit slower to work again and I made simple mistakes on the Box Elder. Well, that's just a matter of more turning. It's also a matter of changing my implicit conception of the size of a blank; from 25cm centre height to 20 to 18.

Hence the play with the ConChuck, about which GJ had a great idea at the weekday turners event; a way of constructing it to allow some centre variation for nat. edge bowls. (Clearly he's been hanging around eccentric Frogs for too long but to good effect!)

The other thing I've found, OK with a sample of all of 3 bowls out of two timber species, is that the VL175 appears to afford bowl hollowing with less flex at the rim. I'll be checking this out further.

The silver lining with one broken wing is that all signs of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome in the other have vanished. More use, or more varied use, perhaps. The physio is stumped by this.

Grumpy John
12th November 2010, 09:02 AM
...............................
Hence the play with the ConChuck, about which GJ had a great idea at the weekday turners event; a way of constructing it to allow some centre variation for nat. edge bowls. (Clearly he's been hanging around eccentric Frogs for too long but to good effect!)
...............................
.


I have so many great ideas :rolleyes:, that I forget which one you are referring to :hmm:.

rsser
12th November 2010, 09:49 AM
An indexed eccentric split pin?

rsser
22nd November 2010, 05:00 PM
Another rough-out being finished. Just the outside for the moment.

It's white oak which is new to me and I was interested to see what the Poms call a hardwood would be like on the lathe.

In short, good turning.

It didn't like a std scraper for cleaning up around the foot, liked a scraper with a burnished hook better and a skew in scraper mode better still.

It's not all that hard by Aus standards but started to polish at 180 grit sandpaper. Kinda surprising.

As you can see it has striking rays and flecks. In the flesh it's paler and browner than the pic.

Quercus kindly gave me a bunch of logs and not having much time before the first pilgrim's progress I sealed the endgrain on all but rough turned the one.

All the logs were cactus when I got back 6 weeks later. The rough-out was seriously oval but still turnable.

The proportions of this are FUgly in my book but it's only destined for a utility bowl.

It's finished with the Ubeaut Shithot Waxtik which worked a treat.

artme
22nd November 2010, 08:15 PM
Love that grain Ern! The combination of growth rings and rays is quite striking!

rsser
22nd November 2010, 09:02 PM
Yeah, it is.

Just finished hollowing it.

Bit of a marathon as I swung the head to 90* and got the outrigger in place.

Argh! The finger tight sleeve that GJ did and that works in the banjo wouldn't go in the outrigger. So it took the std tool rest and for the bottom of the bowl a long overhung HD scraper, and boy was that catchy.

Anyway, the inside's done.

Meantime, that fine pale line of growth on the outside had stood up and needed knocking back with fine steel wool and some more Shithot applied.

That pale line reminds me of Fraxinus figure. Bleddy poms ;-}

joevan
23rd November 2010, 06:32 PM
Hello Ern.
Very good effort for 2 good looking bowl. Some times I wish ny work turned out as well as yours.

BR Joe v K.

rsser
24th November 2010, 05:10 PM
Thanks Joe.

This tip may help:

- true the bowl blank
- draw in ink its cross section on graph paper at half or full scale
- then in pencil play around with a line for the outside, rubbing out and redoing as needed

When you've got a pleasing shape, it stays in your mind and is easy enough to approximate in the flesh. If you're not that confident in your tool technique you can mark the blank for transition points with plunge cuts with a parting tool.

HTH

hughie
25th November 2010, 12:34 PM
yep, that's what I do, play around with a half a profile by then its fairly well embedded in the old brain box. :U

rsser
26th November 2010, 03:58 PM
Not all goes to plan Joe.

Some you win, some you lose.

This piece was 280 x 35 and I wasn't that happy with the outside. Rechucked, I got a reasonable line but it needed refining and I started that with a scraper.

Then I thought, sod it, it just needs one good pass with a small gouge and I'll save myself a heap of sanding.

Got a catch at the rim flex and this is the result.

The 2nd pic is not that focussed but you can see a notch at the top of the rim .... which is where the catch happened.

Post mortem: go in with a smaller gouge and/or a lighter touch.

Despite the failure I count this as a good arvo's work. Some lumps are worth designating as learning pieces.

BTW, poxy timber. American Cedar which I think I got from GJ and think he got from Steck. Damn nose is still running.